While President Donald Trump may seem to be holding an Apprentice-style competition to choose his successor, a new poll shows that voters have a clear favorite.
Vice President JD Vance leads the field, with 46 percent of Republicans supporting him as the party’s 2028 presidential nominee, according to a survey conducted by JL Partners.
Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, is the top choice for just 6 percent of Republican voters, trailing behind Florida Governor Ron DeSantis at 8 percent and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy at 7 percent.
This comes despite Rubio’s growing prominence, as he juggles expanded responsibilities, including his role as interim National Security Adviser, where he has led several key diplomatic initiatives.
In recent weeks, the president has started publicly promoting Rubio’s potential to appeal to the MAGA base.
“You look at Marco, you look at JD Vance, who’s fantastic,” Trump said during an interview with NBC after he was asked who would inherit his movement after he leaves office in January 2029. “You look at — I could name 10, 15, 20 people right now just sitting here.”
That said, a source familiar with Trump’s thinking on the matter told the UK’s Telegraph that it’s not a priority for the president at the moment.
“No one is even thinking about it at the moment,” said the source. “The only agenda is getting the job done.”
That said, JD Vance remains the clear frontrunner. He enjoys strong support within Trump’s base, and his Midwestern roots, along with the popularity of his bestselling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” have helped him resonate with the blue-collar voters who played a pivotal role in the 2024 election victory.
Rubio, a former U.S. senator from Florida and a 2016 presidential contender, represents a different wing of the Republican Party. Once viewed as an establishment figure with hawkish foreign policy views, he has nonetheless earned praise from insiders for how seamlessly he has integrated into the Trump administration, The Telegraph reported.
Meanwhile, Vance has shot down unsourced rumors that he and Rubio are rivals in the White House.
“He is probably my best friend in the administration,” Vance, himself a former U.S. senator, told Fox News. “We hang out and talk all the time.”
The poll also found that 57 percent of Republicans would back Rubio if he became the party’s nominee in 2028, though 35 percent said they were unsure or undecided about him.
Caroline Mulvaney, research manager at JL Partners, noted that while Vance is the clear frontrunner, the large number of undecided voters and the fragmented field leave significant room for movement. She added that Rubio still has time to build support and solidify his standing.
“Something really working against him is the portion of voters who simply have no opinion about his place on the ballot, or haven’t decided how they feel yet,” she told The Telegraph. “While that is concerning for him, it’s too early to say for sure how he should proceed. As the race narrows, it could be that his strong performance and public presence of late starts to work in his favor, where currently the number of possible nominees is diluting the effect.”
Meanwhile, a resurfaced clip of Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, a member of the progressive “Squad,” ignited a firestorm on social media this week, as conservatives, including Vance, slammed her for past remarks about the “radicalization of white men.”
“I would say our country should be more fearful of White men across our country, because they are actually causing most of the deaths within this country,” Omar told Middle East outlet Al-Jazeera in 2018 as she discussed domestic terrorism threats in the United States and in response to a question on how much concern “jihadism” poses to the United States.
“This isn’t just sick; it’s actually genocidal language,” Vice President JD Vance posted on X. “What a disgrace this person is.”